Seismic shifts ahead in Japan's anime industry

When Hayao Miyazaki announced his retirement from feature filmmaking in September last year, it was hardly unexpected: the septuagenarian co-founder and resident genius of Studio Ghibli had been retiring and returning for years. But once it became clear that this time he meant it, the tectonic plates in the Japanese animation business shifted, although the tsunami of change has not come - yet.

In July, as it had done almost annually for more than two decades, Studio Ghibli released an animated feature, Hiromasa Yonebayashi's When Marnie Was There. Based on a 1967 children's novel by British author Joan G. Robinson, this film about a life-changing friendship between two girls received generally positive reviews - but its projected box office take of about 3.6 billion yen (HK$262 million) was less than a third of the 12 billion yen earned by The Wind Rises, Miyazaki's last film, released the summer before.

Its disappointing performance, at least by Ghibli standards, has prompted speculation that When Marnie Was There will be the studio's last film, fuelled by a blogger's mistranslation of remarks made by Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki, on a Tokyo Broadcasting System documentary show last month. Suzuki's comment that Ghibli might temporarily shutter its production department while it assessed its future direction became an announcement of the studio's imminent demise.

Despite the corrections that soon appeared, as well as a statement by Suzuki that Miyazaki was thinking about directing a short film, it is now clear Japan's animation industry has entered not just a post-Miyazaki but a post-Ghibli age in the eyes of many. At the same time, however, industry insiders are quick to stress that the anime business is not so much dying as it is changing, even evolving.

"Miyazaki's retirement is important for people at the studio and for the market … but the animation industry as a whole, us included, is not affected," is how Shuzo John Shiota, president and CEO of Polygon Pictures, a digital animation house with a three-decade history, puts it.

One reason: the industry has long expected the 73-year-old Miyazaki - who will be presented with an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement on November 8 - and his 78-year-old fellow Ghibli co-founder and master animator, Isao Takahata ( Grave of the Fireflies; The Tale of Princess Kaguya), to fade from the scene.